The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  * * *

  Nearly a month passed without incident. Nikolaus went to school each day, returned to take up his normal activities. His parents talked of politics, silently worrying in the privacy of their own home about the all-reaching powers of the Party. On the streets, Nik saw the same lines of anxiety on the faces of the townspeople, the invisible burden of keeping quiet.

  Yet no one talked about it; conversations were about the weather or how beautiful the flowers had been last summer. No topic of consequence was ever discussed openly although the whispered rumors in the dark of the night spoke of camps and confiscation of property. It was on a Friday that the Nazi Party train pulled into the bahnhof and a great cloud of steam puffed from its engine as nearly fifty men in uniform streamed from the cars.

  They spread out systematically, covering both the Bernkastel side of the river and the Kues side, quickly taking stock of the few valuables in the shops (most merchandise of any worth had long since been sold out of the country or secreted away in the owner’s home), then they began door-to-door searches. The questions began innocuously enough: “What do you have to contribute to the war effort?” Within a household that gave up nothing there would then come a search of every room.

  They had apparently found fine art, gold and silver jewelry, valuable collections in other cities along the river—larger, more prosperous places. But Bernkastel and Kues held little of that. They were small villages—historic and charming, to be sure, but not the homes of the wealthy. Nikolaus huddled beside the statue of the bears as the men spread through the marketplace and into the residential streets.

  He edged his way along in their wake, hovering a block or two behind, until they came to the boarded-up former jewelry store. One man kicked the door in and three others rushed inside. Nikolaus could have told them there was nothing left. The Jewish family who once owned it had been taken away more than two years ago and the contents of the shop packed up in Nazi sacks. Nik and his brothers had ventured in the following day to find nothing but broken glass and shattered display cases. Other shops suffered the same fate and the mayor formed a committee to board them up so the village would be less unsightly. The men plunderers came back outside now showing empty palms.

  “What about up there?” said the one who had kicked in the door. He stared at the apartment on the second floor and two of them pushed their way up the stairs.

  Nik held his breath. When his mother opened the door she gave a friendly smile such as he had never seen when her parents discussed the government. Behind her stood Grandfather, seeming older and more stooped in the face of the danger. She opened the door wider and stood aside. Nik’s stomach knotted. He thought of his parents’ conversations about this. “We have nothing of value. They will see that. They will look around and leave.”

  He prayed fervently that it was true—the men would leave without harming anyone. He waited until the men came back down the stairs, fifteen long minutes later. They must have poked through cabinets and under beds to take that long in the small place. He was glad he had removed his only treasure.

  Once the men moved along to the next house, Nik raced to the next block and cut through a tiny lane to Grabenstrasse where he tucked himself into a small nook beside a rather dusty clothing shop and watched. From the carved doors of the wine cellar, uniformed soldiers were wrestling with the huge wine casks that had lined the winery’s main storage vault. Curses split the air as they fought the slippery wet, inclined floor trying to maintain control over the barrels which wanted to roll back inside. Nik hid a smile behind his sleeve as he watched their frustration.

  Someone called for a truck and the big, lumbering vehicle arrived a few minutes later. Eventually, the men grappled and tugged one of the barrels aboard. A second and third waited. Nik saw that they had no individual bottles or cases of wine, only the barrels. Afraid of being spotted and nabbed as a spy, he ducked around the corner and made his way home.

  His mother seemed shaken but there was a muted joviality at the fact that the Nazis had come and gone and the family was no worse off. Nik tugged at his father’s sleeve and reported what he had seen at the wine cellar.

  “I checked my work with my most critical eye. They will see nothing unusual,” his father answered.

  The Party train pulled away from the station after ten o’clock that night and the sigh of relief was palpable throughout the village. Lights remained on in the homes until well after midnight, with quiet toasts and cautious words of congratulation. The looters would move down the line, on to the next place. Bernkastel had passed the test.

  However, the news grew worse in the coming months. America had joined the war effort against them—everyone knew that already—and the bombings escalated. Many of the larger cities were ravaged and people fled when they could to the small towns and the countryside. Most, though, had no option. It was a matter of holding onto their sanity while pretending to carry on with daily life—work, school, meals, trying to stay healthy enough to simply make it through another week, another month.

  The reports came of Nazi victories throughout Europe and Nik’s father muttered at the dinner table about how he suspected they were hearing a highly edited version of the events. The few people who had escaped Trier and Koblenz and made their way along the river hinted at far worse things than the newspapers reported. Hitler had an entire department of propaganda, Grandfather said. Don’t trust a word they say. Yet the photos of the massive rallies were impressive and the Führer seemed a kindly man who patted the heads of little children and gave out sweets.

  “I am tired of the whole thing,” Nik’s mother said one Sunday morning. “We cringe in our homes, waiting for events that do not happen, afraid of what—that another trainload of soldiers will come and search us again? We have nothing they want.”

  She had made Nik’s favorite pancakes and set a plate before him.

  “I suggest we have an outing. I will make us a picnic lunch and we can walk along the river path toward Andel. A change of scenery will be good for us all.”

  The boys immediately cheered the idea, even though their grandfather seemed less than enthusiastic.

  “Come along. All of us shall put on our best boots and make the walk.”

  Their best boots were hardly good ones, but something about a new activity brought all their spirits up. The sweet-smelling spring morning gave them a clear sky, and the budding greens and unfurling leaves on the Riesling vines cheered them. The boys raced ahead on the footpath.

  “What’s this, father?” shouted Fritz. He pointed to something in the water.

  Nikolaus had trailed behind, caught up in watching a small red squirrel. He saw his two brothers hovering at the edge of the riverbank, his parents catching up to them and Grandfather bending over, as eager as any child to see the odd thing sticking half out of the water. Fritz reached out to touch it and the thing shifted in the water.

  Then it exploded.

  Nik felt himself flying through the air and for one moment a thrill rushed through him. Flying! Then everything went black.

  * * *

  “Tell us about your hometown, Dad,” Krystle begged. She crossed one bell-bottom-clad leg over the other and leaned back in her seat. Johann was driving, taking the exit to the E42.

  Nikolaus ran a hand through his hair. When had it become so sparse? And gray—he refused to think about it. When he began to speak he was ten years old once more.

  “I used to run about all over the village,” he said. “My favorite thing was the statue of the bears. I hope it is still there …”

  Forty years since he had visited Bernkastel or Kues. The days in hospital came back only as dim memories, flashes of scenes really, no more. Nurses in white, sympathetic glances. Poor little boy, lost his entire family … Where shall he go? A blond woman coming to visit. Swiss-German. He didn’t want to see her. Wanted mutter and vater. Tears from the nurses when he asked about them. The Swiss lady came back, this time with a husband. “We will be
your new parents,” she said, but the concept was unreal. He was sent with them anyway, sent to live in Lucerne, and eventually he came to enjoy their home, and almost to actually love them.

  And now, now these two sitting beside him in the train were his own. Modern children—young adults, he reminded himself—who hopped trains all over Europe, stayed in hostels with other kids like themselves and spoke four languages. Thirty years of marriage to their mother and yet he had never brought any of them to Bernkastel. Not until Christina died—four months ago. He could not believe it—and Krystal and Johann whispered behind his back far too often, conspiring to get him out of the house, back to pleasanter memories. So, here they were, slowing as the highway became Gestade and then Schanzstrasse.

  “Watch for the old stone gate. It will take us directly into the Marktplatz. Go slowly now.”

  “Right, Dad, I have it,” Johann said, taking the turn. A café with umbrellas at outdoor tables sat where the church rectory used to be.

  “There! See to the right. That’s the Doktor Fountain, in honor of the famous doctor whose medicinal wine saved the prince!”

  Nikolaus could hear the excitement in his own voice and he caught the satisfied glance between his son and daughter. Coming here had been the right thing to do, they were thinking. He sat back grumpily for a moment, until another sight caught his eye—the statue of the bears.

  “Find a place to park. We’ll walk now. I shall tell you the story my mother always told me at bedtime.”

  Johann stopped the small blue BMW at a spot along the curb and they got out. Nikolaus stretched, feeling the creak in his joints. His career as an accountant, a desk job in Zurich, had not exactly kept him in shape for running through the cobbled streets of his childhood home. Ach, no one would expect him to run about these days anyway. With the hip that had never healed quite correctly and a weak heart, he had been suited for nothing more strenuous than a desk job, and his damaged hearing bothered no one as he worked in his narrow world of numbers and balances. He had become quite content with his life.

  They paused at the bear statue and he recounted the story of the lost woman and her children and how the bears had saved their lives. Down a tiny side street he showed off the place they called the Pointed House and Krystal snapped a picture of it. Only ten feet wide at the street level, the funny little place had two additional floors above, each a little wider than the other.

  “It’s like a wedding cake upside down,” his daughter commented with a laugh.

  “Except for the very pointed roof, yes you are right.”

  His eyes followed the lane he had traveled hundreds of times. The shops were different now, with fashions that focused on blue jeans and vividly colored blouses, others featuring electronic things he would have never imagined as a boy. He began to follow the familiar way, taking in the structures which had not changed much, the little details that had—flower baskets now, electric street lamps, clusters of tourists. He allowed his feet to take him to his old memories, to ignore his analytical side.

  The lane widened into an intersection now constricted by cars. Across the way a sight made his breath catch.

  “It is still a jewelry shop,” he marveled. “And above …” His eyes rose to the apartment.

  The building was painted a different color now and there was a new iron gate at the bottom of the stairs, with a mailbox and a name—Werner. No Schenkes had lived here in a very long time. The jewelry shop was, of course, not the same one. That one had been owned by Jews—the Goldsteins, he seemed to remember. As a child he wondered why they went away so suddenly. As an adult, unfortunately, he was fairly certain that he knew. It was the national shame now, learning what had been happening right under their noses, and most of the citizens having no idea of it—being clueless, his children would say.

  An image of a Nazi soldier came to him, a man who lived here in Bernkastel surely not far from his own home, although as he recalled he’d only seen the man around town a few times and never knew where he lived. There was once, in the Marktplatz, the soldier with a wife and children. He was a man, like any other, not a monster. Nikolaus believed that now, although he had experienced mixed feelings about it over the years. Some of them truly had been monsters.

  That same soldier, Nikolaus remembered, had been the one who dropped a cloth-wrapped parcel into the waste bin at the old train station. Trains had not stopped in Bernkastel for more than twenty years now but the big old, grand dame of a building was still there—he’d spotted the distinctive roofline just before they made the turn— He digressed.

  He’d been thinking about the soldier and the package. Little Nik had grabbed that package and run for home with his treasure. The heart-pounding excitement of discovery, the thrill of owning something all his own, a treasure not to be shared with his brothers. Hiding it in his clothing trunk under the bed … gut Gott, he had not thought of that in decades. That carved box—a few times it had warmed and changed appearance when he handled it. Fascinating to a small boy, magical. It had been his most prized possession. And yet, what had happened to it?

  “Dad? What are you thinking?” Krystal asked.

  “Ach, just old memories.” His voice sounded faraway, even to him.

  “Let’s get some lunch. I smell bratwurst.” She took his arm and he allowed himself to be steered away.

  In the café, he speared the sausage with his fork, savored the flavors of that and the sauerkraut together. Each town and each region in Germany had its own specialties when it came to sausages, beer and, here in the Mosel valley, the wines; these evoked the pangs of childhood even more vividly than had their walk through the streets. There was truly nothing like the food from one’s home village. He took a sip of his wine and a vision popped into his head.

  That wine cellar. He saw himself, aged ten, mixing mortar, his father and grandfather handling the bricks. The anxious owner hovering about in fear that the Nazis would catch them as they created a hidden chamber.

  “We have to go. There is one more place in town I must see.” He tossed his napkin on top of his half-finished plate.

  “Almost done,” Johann said, quickly downing his last two bites of the bratwurst.

  Nikolaus tapped his foot, then reminded himself this was silly. If that wall was still there, it had been standing more than forty years and would be there in another fifteen minutes. The wine cellar and tunnel might not be there at all.

  As it turned out, they were. The arched doorway with the carvings was the same, although he suspected the wood had been sanded and refinished a few times over the years. The tunnel walls still dripped with water.

  “My grandfather bought the winery after the war,” the new owner explained. “Unfortunately, the sons of the previous owner were killed in the war and he could no longer manage it on his own. Our family has cared for it, going on three generations now. We are quite proud of our Riesling, especially this year’s vintage.” He led them into a large room where chairs sat before a long table. “Here, have a taste.”

  Nikolaus looked around. The tasting room sat beside the aging-chamber he remembered, the dimly lit place where gigantic casks had towered over him. Now they were not quite as tall as he, but two rows of them lay on their sides, as always.

  “What of the hidden room at the back?” he asked. “There were some very old wines stored there.”

  The young man who had escorted them seemed puzzled.

  “May I?” Without waiting for an answer Nikolaus started walking the aisle between the casks, making his way in the gloom. The others followed.

  The chamber came to an end at a bricked wall. Nikolaus placed his hands on it.

  “There is a room beyond this wall,” he said. “My father and grandfather closed it in when the Nazis were on their way. The room was used to store the most valuable of the wines and the owner knew they would be looted.”

  He turned toward the vintner with tears in his eyes. “I, myself, helped with the job and I placed something of great
importance to me inside, just before the wall went up. A small wooden box.”

  The man appeared to hear nothing beyond ‘valuable wines.’ He rushed to the tasting room and picked up a telephone. Within minutes two men arrived with sledge hammers and pry bars; they were introduced as cousins of their host. Nikolaus and his family stood aside as the smashing began. A small hole opened; bricks were pried away, a light shone inside. Exclamations of excitement at the racks of bottles inside.

  “Is the wooden box—?” Nik felt a childlike thrill.

  A person-sized hole was made and the host went in with his flashlight. He returned with two wine bottles tucked under his arms, a carved wooden box in his hands. The box looked darker than Nikolaus remembered, nearly black.

  Nikolaus reached out for his treasure, marveling that it had been there. He carried it to the tasting room, noting that the stain on the wood now appeared brown. While his attention was on the box, the other men were examining the labels on their wine.

  “We must open one bottle,” said the man who had brought Nikolaus’s family here. “To celebrate our luck that you came here today.” He reached for his corkscrew.

  One taste told them that the wine had turned. Disappointment showed on every face.

  “I am sorry,” Nikolaus said. “I suppose it has been too long.”

  “It doesn’t mean that every bottle is bad,” said one of the cousins. “We can check more of them.”

  Nikolaus picked up his box and bade the vintners goodbye. Out in the sun again, the box was now nearly a golden brown and he remembered how the box used to change when he held it; he had always assumed the glow of the wood meant something good. Too bad for the vintners that it had not worked its good powers on their wine. It occurred to him that the artifact might contain both good and bad influences. Did its owner or its location make a difference?

  “Here, Dad, I can hold that for you,” Johann offered as they began the walk back toward their car.

  Nikolaus relinquished the box and felt his energy immediately drain away. In Johann’s hands the box had gone dim again. A heavy weight seemed to press upon Nikolaus’s chest. He looked around the village of his youth, seeing the half-timbered buildings and millennia of history one last time before he fell to the cobbled street.